1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Broken dreams

September 15, 2011

For the billion dollars spent for waging war in Afghanistan, each citizen could have been handed 15, 000 US dollars according to UN estimates. But corruption and increasing violence tell a different story.

https://p.dw.com/p/RlqM
Money has gone into the pockets of corrupt politicians and officials
Money has gone into the pockets of corrupt politicians and officialsImage: AP

Safety fears stop people travelling to hospitals, or even to schools, so much so that some conservative Afghans still hark back to the security and values that the Taliban offered, according to a Reuters report.

"Whatever people feel about what has happened, whether it was good or bad...they aren't sure about their future," according to Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Van Bijlert believes that progress has been made, but there is a strong sense that the achievements are not proportionate to all the money and focus that has been given to Afghanistan. The US alone has spent nearly 450 billion dollars on the Afghan war.

Civilians have been killed in many attacks by security forces
Civilians have been killed in many attacks by security forcesImage: dapd

At stake is not just Afghanistan's future, but US security. A country engulfed in civil war could easily become a refuge again for groups looking to attack America.

An uncertain future

Life expectancy in the war-ravaged country is under 45 years. Around a quarter of children don't even live to see their fifth birthday. Even for those who survive, expectations are low. Just one in four adults can read or write and unemployment is believed to run as high as 40 percent.

The West's aid and military spending, while well-intentioned, has been overwhelming for Afghanistan with its security problems. So instead of funding growth, much of it has been diverted into the pockets of both the elite and insurgents, helping to fuel a culture of rampant corruption. Everything from justice to electricity supply is tangled up in demands for bribes. Graft costs Afghans 2.5 billion US dollars a year, according to UN estimates and Transparency International rated it the world's third most corrupt country, behind only Myanmar and Somalia.

War proves catastrophic

For some, the war has spelt not just uncertainty, but catastrophe. Abdullah, from eastern Nangarhar province, dreamt of being an interpreter and got good grades until U.S. soldiers arrived at night and shot his father and elder brother. He now works in a brick kiln to support his family. "The US troops freed me and they said that your brother and your father were innocent. What they said to me did not satisfy me. If I had the power I would behead them all," he says angrily.

Many children don't live to see their fifth birthday
Many children don't live to see their fifth birthdayImage: AP

Nationwide, the toll on civilians is getting higher. The first six months of this year were the deadliest since the overthrow of the Taliban; 368 were killed in May alone. The vast majority of the deaths were caused by insurgents, but it is the foreign killings that most often spark outrage.

"Afghans don't expect not to be killed by the Taliban, but they do expect not to be killed by international forces," said Heather Barr, of Human Rights Watch Afghanistan.

Although the West rushed into Afghanistan with money, forces and talented officials, years of relative neglect meant they lacked one critical commodity: understanding of the complexities of the country they wanted to transform. "The huge optimism, the sense of a clean state, the idea that you could build a country and a government from zero, that was the biggest mistake," van Bijlert concludes.

Reuters
Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan